Posted by marvin from l316t1p28.netway.at (195.96.17.156)on March 24, 1998 at 03:31:00:
In Reply to: Re: oops, sorry, you have to rename the file glide2x.dll to glide2x.voo of course... posted by Christer M on March 24, 1998 at 02:53:28:
There are many possibilities. I don't think that
the V2k is much slower than a voodoo. So
o) either the game is slow on voodoo, too (we will
get this feedback from Bjorn, hopefully today)
o) or the (very!! unoptimized) overhead in the
wrapper is too large (this then would be
highly CPU-dependent - let's see for some
other results on other machines)
o) or there are still some principal differences
between the wrapper and the normal voodoo
operation
Having checked the game yesterday evening again,
I think that the slowness is most visible and
annoying only in the ever-moving startscreen with
the main game menu.... Don't know why it is
so slow. While playing the game, I am really
quite satisfied with the speed!???
Trying to explain my third point above: two
main critical points for optimization are not
yet implemented in the wrapper:
o) The texture upload needs locked system
memory for DMA transfer. Since I did not
yet implement any delayed-unlock logics,
I have to stay in the grTexDownloadMipMap()
routine, and have to wait until the transfer
is completed... This may be a huge performance
drawback!!!!
However, I don't know how Voodoo transfers
the textures: can I rely on the fact that the
system memory of the texture remains unchanged and
accessible when I exit the grTexDownloadMipMap()
routine?
But probably it will work, and it should give
some/much speed (but I don't think that textures
are loaded for each and every frame....)
o) The second one is simple and perhaps the main
reason for loss of speed: Croc configures
backface culling, and I did not yet implement
backface culling in the DrawTriangle routine...
(should not be quite simple).
Perhaps then we will experience a boost in
performance...
For now I am still puzzled by the texture
problem, and I have decided to put some effort
into the windowed version in order to get some
new debugging options...